Posts Tagged ‘Ministry of Transport’

Seriously the A-Rabs have come up with something interesting that we should copy asap.

On Christmas eve, it was announced that Dubai is to launch a company with Careem, the regional rival to Uber, to manage the ride-hailing system for all taxis operating in Dubai, the Gulf’s S’pore.

The Dubai authorities said this would be the world’s first partnership between a government regulator and a private ride-hailing app. Dubai, like other regulatory authorities, has clashed with fast-growing ride-hailing companies challenging the dominance of traditional taxi services.

Careem said

— it would have a 49% in the joint venture, which would manage e-hailing systems and online payments for almost 11,000 taxis; and

— the venture could be expanded to include other transportation services, such as buses, as Dubai seeks to extend its regional leadership in technology innovation of government services.

There was no correlation to train delays of more than five minutes to the hairline cracks, LTA said at the briefing. It indicated that most of the delays since 2014 were linked to signalling faults, door or brake issues, with none linked to hairline cracks.

The authority added that even when trains were being repaired, there were always enough trains to meet demand.

For example, for 2016, there are 140 trains available for the North-South and East-West lines, and 124 trains are needed to meet demand. This will continue till 2019 – when replacement work is completed – where there will always be more trains available than needed, according to estimates.

Piece is worth a read, explaining why it would have been better for the authorities to have disclosed the cracks and the remedial action: they would then have controlled the news agenda.

But this analysis and other criticisms of the silence miss the point.

PAPpies brains work differently: when the public doesn’t know a fact, that fact never exists.

In 2011, I analysed a senior PAPpy’s and his team’s unhappiness with a TOC report.

I wrote, they must believe in an 18th century philosophical theory that is now treated as a forerunner of the concept of “subjective idealism”. One Bishop Berkeley argued that there are no material objects, only minds and ideas in those minds. He summarised his theory with the motto “esse est percipi” (“To be is to be perceived”). In modern PR-speak, this translates into,“Perception is reality”, one of the major tenets of the PR and public communication industry.

This theory of “Perception is reality” is best summarised in the following example he gave. If a tree in a forest falls, but no-one sees or hears it fall, has it fallen? Berkeley argues that it has not fallen. It is still standing.

An example in the S’pore context would be that S’poreans were not aware of how close the voting would be on polling day in 1988 in Eunos GRC and in Cheng San GRC in 1991. The mainstream media did not report the sentiment on the ground in these two GRCs, so S’poreans were not aware that many S’poreans were unhappy with the PAP. The unhappiness did not exist because it was not reported.

Coming back to Traingate. SMRT, the LTA and MoT kept quiet because they like Bishop Berkeley believe that “Perception is reality”. So long as the public did not know that there were cracks in the 26 China-made trains, and that the trains had been returned for repairs, there were no train cracks. There were no cracked trains because If a tree in a forest falls, but no-one sees or hears it fall, has it fallen? Berkeley argues that it has not fallen. It is still standing.

What they still don’t realise that in this age of social media and the internet where many people walk around with smartphone cameras, If a tree in a forest falls, someone will see it or hear it fall. And tell others about the falling tree, after taking a selfie beside the fallen tree.

This being the case, disclosure of problems or cock-ups, not cover-ups or silence should be the best (and default) policy for the authorities and corporations They should assume that news of the cock-up or problem will become public knowledge and that by disclosing, the news agenda can, hopefully, be controlled..

But in one-party states, silence or cover-up are the default options, not disclosure. And this is the weakness of one-party states where people carry smartphone cameras. The one-party state will, in time, be undermined.

Ban smartphone cameras PAP? After all internet access for public servants will soon be restricted in this wired, connected nation.

Everone else is talking cock and singing song. The Oppo parties, anti-PAP cyberwarriors and activists, allied websites and bloggers, and other new media outlets are screaming their heads off over the cracks in PRC-made trains and the failure of SMRT, LTA and the transport ministry (MoT) to tell us about the cracks.

Video footages of the trains being transported in the wee hours of the morning to Jurong Port by now must have been circulated and shared umpteen times on social media.

For most of us, the focus is on the trains that were defective and were transported `covertly’ back to the manufacturer. For those who have completely missed the video (there are a few others), you can click on the link here (credit of icablenews).

Now scroll to 35 second portion of the video.

This is my concern.

A drone was launched and had a bird’s eye view of the trains that were going to be shipped out.

It is also frightening to know that whoever launched the drone over our port knows exactly the spot where the trains were being unloaded. No one actually spotted the drone hovering inside our port?

Our port is supposedly a protected area. Maritime Port Authority (MPA) perhaps can answer this question of whether drones are allowed to hover over our ports.

Now the next question, if indeed the drone was launched `inside’ the port, was our security so laxed that the perpetuator(s) was able to sneak by our the check points without proper security pass and clearance?

Imagine this drone carried explosives and launched by terrorists to crash into our critical facilities within the port.

Food for thought.

JY

*A concern citizen with more than 9 years’s experience working as a risk practitioner.

Shame on TRE* , TO** , the Indian***, TMG, mothership etc.

And shame on the anti-PAP mob who in their hurry to criticise SMRT, LTA and the PAP administration missed this open goal.

New media and anti-PAPpies are guilty of group think, something that they criticise the PAP of. They are just as guilty of gtoup-think.

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*OK it did publish the remarks but otherwise its coverage was juz as shirty as the other publications.

**OK Terry’s away and TOC did tell us about the HK report: the other publications were clueless until they read TOC. They didn’t even credit TOC for reporting the news first. Taz new media ethics fot you.

***Politician Ravi needs to clean up the mess that he inherited ASAP before TISG’s past tarnishes his reputation.

Everyone else is talking cock and singing song. The Oppo parties, anti-PAP cyberwarriors and activists, allied websites and bloggers, and other new media outlets are screaming their heads off over the cracks in PRC-made trains and the failure of SMRT, LTA and the transport ministry (MoT) to tell us about the cracks.

Can the critics answer the following questions:

Has anyone died as a result of the faulty trains?

Has anyone been injured?

And, has SMRT, LTA or the MoT lost money?

So why should the swing voter care?

There’s only one reason why the swing voters and all S’poreans should care about Traingate. But the usual suspects are too clueless to ask the question that will interest the swing voter. The usual suspects all own cars isit? Or they all unemployed isit? So no need to travel during rush hours?

Only SgDaily’s Joel Koh asks: What happens to service reliability and timings?

And better still, he did some research.

He writes: Remember that SMRT announced last year that it would be adding trains to shorten train service intervals. The current move to recall 26 trains removes 11 per cent from the current fleet’s capacity. Should we expect a corresponding decrease in service reliability and a lengthening of service timings?

This means longer waiting times and decreased passenger satisfaction. Perhaps in typical “only hear the good stuff” fashion, LTA has decided to keep mum about this to avoid making a bad situation even worse?

Yet it does get worse. The existing infrastructure may have to bear hidden additional costs because of this recall. With the reduced capacity, existing trains would have to make more trips, ferry more passengers and undergo more wear and tear during this period.

What would be disastrous is if the older trains also start to display similar issues or develop problems as a result of the need to meet this increased load, which could lead to more trains being taken out of service.

Shame on the Oppo parties, anti-PAP cyberwarriors and activists, allied websites and bloggers, and other new media outlets for not asking this question, resulting in missing an open goal.

To be fair to TeamTRE, after their rant there was this throwaway line which ended the piece

With 26 trains out of service, MRT commuters might want to consider waking up a few hours earlier than usual or bunking in at the office to avoid being late for work as it sure as hell is going to be more crowded than ever.

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Finally, a clarification. He wrote

This piece was inspired by Thoughts of a Cynical Investor. He asks why LTA did not mention how the train recalls will impact MRT train service timings.

Actually my question to SgDaily in an email was more general:

Do SMRT, LTA tell us how train services will be maintained as these trains are repaired.